The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals may have tried to cover up a particularly deplorable decision in a civil-rights case by not publishing it. But the videotape of a Florida police officer repeatedly tasering a handcuffed motorist has now shown up on YouTube --- with the apparent support of the dissenting judge.

As the video graphically shows, Washington County Sheriff's Deputy Jonathan Rackard used his taser during a traffic stop not to subdue a resisting suspect -– the purpose for which the stun gun is designed –- but as a “pain-compliance” device to force Jesse Buckley to stand up and get into his police car.

The distinction was lost on a 2-1 majority of the 11th Circuit which, in an unpublished Sept. 9 opinion, reversed a trial court judge and summarily dismissed Buckley's excessive force case against Rackard.

“Defendant’s use of force in this particular situation was not outside the range of reasonable conduct under the Fourth Amendment,” Chief Judge J. L. Edmondson, referring to the tasering of Buckley as “moderate, nonlethal force” that properly effected the state's interest in “arrests being completed efficiently and without waste of limited resources.”

U.S. District Judge Beverly B. Martin of Georgia, sitting by designation, vehemently disagreed with the majority. “[T]he Fourth Amendment forbids an officer from discharging repeated bursts of electricity into an already handcuffed misdemeanant --- who is sitting still beside a rural road and unwilling to move -- simply to goad him into standing up,” she said in her dissent.

In the recent excessive force case of Scott v. Harris, the U.S. Supreme Court released the police videotape along with its decision. The 11th Circuit majority did not follow that example, but Martin sidestepped them.

“A video captured the events in question, and I suggest it be published together with this opinion,” she wrote, citing Scott.

Buckley attorney James V. Cook of Tallahassee, Fla., took the hint and posted the six-minute video on YouTube earlier this week. Any reasonable viewer can only agree with Martin that the arrest of Buckley was anything but efficient.

“Each five-second discharge [of the taser] in fact frustrated Deputy Rackard’s efforts in getting Mr. Buckley to stand and walk to the police car,” the judge said.

Rackard arrested Buckley, who was financially destitute and homeless, for refusing to sign a citation for speeding. After being handcuffed, Buckley received three taser discharges, leaving him with 16 burn scars.

In a concurrence, Circuit Judge Joel F. Dubina said that “Rackard’s conduct of applying the taser on the third occasion violated the Constitution,” but “such violation was not clearly established” in case law at the time.

Cook is preparing a motion for rehearing en banc.

By Matthew Heller
9/17/08